The Remaking Of Things Unmade
by nubiem
Summary: Sirius never makes it to the Department of Mysteries. The world becomes too dangerous of a place for Remus. Together, they lock themselves and their loneliness away in empty headquarters. Somehow, life goes on like it used to. Somehow, it doesn't. Non-OotP Compliant. COMPLETE.


**Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or places and am not profiting from this in any way. All I own is a bad tempered cat and an undying belief that the Marauders were some of the most neglected characters in the Harry Potter universe. **

**A/N: **This is mostly canon up until OotP. It's a standalone piece with no hopes of an epilogue or sequel. As this is my first time focusing on these characters, I'd love it if you could let me know what you think in a **REVIEW**.

**Summary: **When the Battle at the Department of Mysteries happened, Sirius was banned from coming on Dumbledore's orders, believing it too dangerous for him to be seen at the Ministry with a collection of Death Eaters whilst he was being considered a fugitive, so he remains locked up in Grimmauld Place. After Dumbledore's death, the world is far less safe for Remus than it ever has been and he resigns himself to a life of solitude with Sirius, locking himself away. Somehow, life goes on like it used to. Somehow, it doesn't.

* * *

"You're going to kill yourself, you know," Remus says, settling into his usual place at the dining table. _The Evening Prophet_ is sprawled open in front of him, pictures of escaped Death Eaters swirling up the pages with Fudge's lies smeared throughout. Someone had gone through with a quill and circled most of the mistruths, dotted notes through the margins. There's even a moustache drawn onto a particularly unflattering image of Bellatrix Lestrange in red ink. Both eyes have been burned out with what he knows is a cigarette.

"Thought about it," Sirius says and sucks on the end of his cigarette for a moment. When he exhales, the smoke comes out in a thin line, delicate, and his lips form an 'O' as he blows it into a cloud. The end of the cigarette glows orange, delicate, the brightest light in the room. Neither has bothered to turn on any of the lights because they never do. "But what would you do without me, Moony?"

"It's likely I'd sleep a lot better," he says. He wonders if maybe he should take up smoking, if only to give him something to do when they meet like this in the kitchen, the house after midnight, the hours before dawn. The rest of the Order was asleep upstairs, respite from what each new day brought. "I spend enough time worrying about Harry. Worrying about you just about sends me round the twist."

"Why do you think I'm always up at three o'clock in the sodding morning?" Sirius asks. He takes a final drag on his cigarette, putting it out on the face of his cousin's photograph. Bellatrix's scream, ashen, a few embers still barely lit. He pulls the packet out from underneath the paper and lights another with the tip of his wand. "Put some coffee on, would you?"

"I thought tea would be the better option," Remus says, but he sets about preparing the French press, putting spoons in his pocket when he carries it all across to the table. "I suppose you're not planning on trying to get anymore sleep."

"Why bother?" Sirius asks.

Remus knows that his best friend still wakes up screaming, his body coated in a thick layer of sweat, the sheets stained and soaked. Sometimes it's James. Sometimes it's Lily. Occasionally Harry, or even Remus himself. There's normally green light, laughter, and that cold which comes creeping in around the dementors that Sirius has never quite warmed up from. So Padfoot wakes, strips off into just pyjama bottoms, and lights cigarette after cigarette until Moony joins him, speaking only when necessary, just being. Because after all this time, what else is there?

"I wonder if they'll be able to send messages by Christmas," Remus says, not really to Sirius, not even to himself. It's just been playing on his mind as autumn settles in without a scrap of news, but he knows it's unlikely and Sirius backs it up with a snort.

"Always the optimist, Moony," he says.

"Someone has to be."

"Why bother?" Sirius asks again. From the glow of his cigarette, he looks at least a decade younger, no lines and greying temples. Almost like the Sirius he first knew. But Remus knows that in the daylight or moonlight or any real light that is more than the glow of a cigarette, they are both haggard, aged well past forty. He is scarred, Sirius tattooed, and isn't it the same thing, really? Their sins etched into their skin, stories for the world to read, to misinterpret. "I suppose they might."

Remus has almost forgotten what they were talking about but he comes back to the conversation with a jolt. "I don't suppose it'll all be over by then, but it would be nice to hear something. Not that they'll have access to an owl wherever they may be."

"Unlikely," Sirius says, "though I sent Harry a toucan once in his fourth year. Well, not an actual toucan, but close enough. Bloody thing would barely hold still long enough for me to put the note on its leg."

For a moment or maybe two it's as though they are young again, both laughing, quietly like they did in the dormitories at Hogwarts so they wouldn't wake their peers. These days, their peers are just as haggard and tired as they are, trying to capture what sleep they can upstairs, but they don't stop laughing for thirty seconds. Then, Sirius becomes quiet, his cigarette forgotten and a long line of ash on the table.

"He'll be fine, Padfoot," Remus says. "He always is."

* * *

Halloween comes as it always does, with roasted chestnuts and nightmares. Remus wakes up because he swears there's someone laughing in his room, high pitched. But when he can finally force his eyes open because apparently they're glued shut, there's no one laughing, there's no one at all. He manages to roll over long enough to heave up what Molly had cooked for dinner onto the floorboards, shaking, sweating. He wonders if he has been screaming.

He fumbles for his wand and cleans up the mess, though the stench remains, and his feet find cold wood when he has the strength to stand. As he expects, Sirius is in the kitchen and the ashtray is already well populated. He is shaking in the light of his cigarette and the quivers don't stop until Remus puts a hand on his shoulder.

"I fucking hate this," Sirius says and he taps the ash of his latest cigarette into the tray. "Hallo-fucking-ween."

It's the most energy he's had in weeks, as far as Remus can remember. Each word is spat, filth on every consonant, poison laced through each vowel. Even in the orange glow, though, he can see that Sirius' face is wet. He supposes that this is the night Everything happened for him, not just James and Lily, but Everything. It was the night they both became alone.

"I know," Remus says because there's nothing else. "Coffee?"

"Whiskey."

They don't speak again. Remus sits across from him, shivering now that the sweat has cooled, wondering if he could light a fire or if it would break everything. Sirius drinks half the bottle. Remus contents himself with a glass. When three o'clock comes, that uncomfortable time when he never knows if its worth trying to sleep again because the house will be loud in just a few hours and maybe he'll feel even worse if he gets any rest, Remus is being smothered. He stands, the silence dripping away with his footsteps and he stands at the doorway.

"I'm going back to bed," he says. He wants to ask if Sirius will join him. They haven't done that since Before, but this is the first Halloween they've been under the same roof, the first time he has needed rather than just wanted. "I'll see you at a more human hour, I suppose."

Sirius nods at the table and Remus leaves the door open, firelight from the drawing room spilling across the kitchen floor. He leaves his bedroom door open, too, and it doesn't take long before Sirius slips through, closing it quietly behind him and pulling the sheets back to hop under the blanket. They don't touch but Remus is almost painfully aware of Sirius' body heat radiating across the space between them and is reminded that it has been over a year since anyone touched him.

"Do you ever think about how it could've been easier?" Sirius says. "If none of us had become friends."

"I'm a werewolf, Padfoot," he reminds him. "The War was never going to be easy on me, either way."

"But think about it," Sirius says. "You could have been married by now. Had a litter of kids with some woman. Hell, even with my cousin."

Remus doesn't say it but his heart hurts at the mention of Tonks. It was only a month but they both had known it was supposed to be something before Bellatrix got to her. He wonders if Sirius knows her hair turned white when she died. He wonders if he knows that hers is the face Remus sees most when he has nightmares.

"I wouldn't have known her if I didn't know you," Remus reminds him and he hears Sirius grunt in response. There's almost silence for a few minutes and he would have thought Sirius had fallen asleep if it weren't for the short, shallow breaths coming from next to him.

"Remember when you saw that house in Wales you liked?" Sirius asks and Remus is taken back to a rainy Saturday afternoon before Everything happened. In his apartment, a property circled in the real estate guide of _The Daily Prophet_, his scribbled sums in the margin of the page and Sirius staring over his shoulder, mentioning that at least there would be room for Harry to learn how to fly, unlike in the backyard at Godric's Hollow. "We should've bought it. We should've left."

Remus remembers open fields and a few of a river. "What good would that have done?" he asks. "Leaving James and Lily here?"

"What good did having us around do?" Sirius asks. "They're dead either way."

And Remus knows Padfoot's cheeks will be stained with tears again, just like his are now, and he turns and hides his face against his pillow, pretends to sleep. In the morning, they've slept late and it's after nine when he wakes, Sirius' body tangled around his, legs knotting together and his arm across Remus' chest. Safe, warm, reminiscent. Through rainy morning light, his face is smoother, softer, less lines, more like the man he had been in those earlier years. The way Remus likes to remember him. The way Remus likes to remember all of them.

* * *

Christmas comes without any news. Sirius climbs into his bed early on Christmas morning, before even the most eager of children will have woken to unwrap their gifts. This is their routine. This is how they stay alive.

* * *

By March, the weather is warming again. Remus takes to _Potterwatch_, sets up equipment in the kitchen. Sirius sits and smokes when Remus broadcasts, doesn't say a word. Fred does most of the talking, sometimes sneaks a cigarette or two from Sirius' packet if his mother isn't in the room. From the corner, Lee coordinates. Marauders of their own, the younger boys look years older than they are, pushing their mid-twenties on their better days. Remus wonders if that's how they looked before Everything, tired eyes and shaking hands, but still smiling, not knowing the worst of it yet.

One night, he wakes and hears screams, two floors up. The rest of the house is emptied and Remus is quick to his feet, taking stairs two at a time until he is almost panting and out of breath, still fresh from a full moon the night before. The screaming continues, he almost breaks the door down, Sirius sweating, tossing and tangling himself in his sheets as he thrashes. Remus crosses the room in two steps and pulls him close, holds him against his chest when he wakes, lets him soak his shirt with salt water.

Afterwards, they give up their pretence. Few people come to stay anymore, just Remus and Sirius and the portraits of the dead. But when they do, even then, Sirius just follows Remus five minutes later and they lie in Remus' bed, not touching until they sleep, waking in their usual mismatch of limbs, Sirius all across Remus, Remus all attached to Sirius. He thinks of how it used to be just the same, only with less scars and tattoos and screaming until the portraits downstairs wake.

With the house empty, they don't bother anymore. Sirius makes breakfast in just his pyjama bottoms, Remus slums around in whatever comfortable clothing he can find. Neither of them return to the kitchen in the early hours, neither of them waking up anymore. They don't talk about it, don't touch when they're awake, don't even really speak anymore. All that is left to speak about is the list of their dead friends, piling up, new reports coming in each day over _Potterwatch_, now run from a room at The Burrow. Sirius is still a fugitive, Remus the same of a different sort, neither knowing what they can do with themselves, neither leaving for very much at all.

Remus buys Muggle newspapers, spreads them open on the dining room table. There are questions about casualties, unknown murderers they can name in a heartbeat, signatures and patterns even the newest Order member can recognise. But he skips past them, finds the property guides, looks for properties in the countryside where maybe they could escape and Sirius could run, see the stars. He circles them, even marks down properties overseas when he can find them. One day he sees sprawling greenery, a house for sale in Wales with wide fields. In red ink, he circles it, leaves the newspaper open on the table.

Sometimes, when they know the fighting is elsewhere, Sirius will transform. Remus doesn't ask why, but he thinks it must just be for the change, and on good days they go to the park. Padfoot runs as fast as he can, as far away as he can, until the sun starts to set and that familiar dread settles deep in Remus' chest. When they return to Grimmauld Place, he is in a foul mood, slams doors, drinks whiskey while Remus cooks their dinner, the steak rarer than any other Order members would like.

Mostly, though, they stay in the library. Sirius tears pages out of his parents' old books, the ones with the curses no one should ever know, the ones with the curses too many people know. He throws them on the fire and Remus watches from the corner of the room, his own book in hand, when Padfoot smiles. It's the first he's seen outside of the bedroom and when all of _those _books have been disposed of, Sirius joins him in reading through whatever is left behind. Anything to pass the time.

It's that day, when the last of the books have been burned, that there is an owl at the window, nondescript with the smallest piece of parchment tied to its foot. Sirius is out of his chair before the owl has even signalled its arrival and Remus shuts his book without marking his place. The bird doesn't wait for replies, doesn't wait for treats, but shoots back into the clear sky when the note is removed. On the parchment, nondescript writing, one word:

_Alive_.

* * *

On the first of May, neither of them can sleep. Sirius gives up first, throwing back the blankets on their bed and pacing around the room. Remus watches him, propped up on one elbow. It is between full moons, almost the middle point, and he is as relaxed as ever whilst Sirius threatens to tear the room apart. It's been high alert since the end of March and he hasn't left the house since, Remus leaving to fetch groceries once a week, afraid to leave him alone for more than an hour. There's been no news since March, just more names, but the night has a heaviness about it, dewiness in the stars.

And then the room glows silver, an orb approaching through the window, transfiguring into a lynx on arrival, Kingsley's voice deep:

"_It's happening. Come to the Hog's Head. Both of you._"

He expects fear. Sadness, even. But Sirius whoops and pulls fresh robes out of the wardrobe, even fishes a tie out from one of the drawers.

"We're going into battle and you're wearing new robes and a tie?" Remus asks. He is pulling on his usual trousers and sweater combination, what Padfoot and Prongs used to call his 'hot librarian ensemble'. Padfoot always threw a wink in at the end. "You haven't worn a tie in years." Sirius throws the piece of fabric at him and Remus turns it over in his hands. There's a small label attached, sewn on just below the brand name in a familiar embroidery. _J&L_. "Oh."

"Help me do it up, would you? You know I've always been shit at it," Sirius says and Remus smooths the silk between his fingers as he crosses the room, standing close enough he can feel Sirius' breath on his face. His fingers shake like they always do and it takes him a couple of attempts before the knot is perfect. "It's going to be different this time. I can feel it." Sirius presses a palm to Remus' cheek and grins. It's almost macabre. "Let's go save our godson, Moony."

And then there's just the night air on his face and Sirius' footsteps down the stairs before Remus comes to what he assumes is his senses and follows, looking around the bedroom once more before he leaves because it's just in case. He wants to believe Sirius but he can't, won't until it's all over and they're all still standing but that's not how war happens. This he has learned.

The Hog's Head is busier than Remus ever saw it when he was a student and he sees a few who don't know of Sirius' innocence recoil until Kingsley embraces them sends them on their way up a tunnel. "Just like old times, eh, Moony?" Sirius says over his shoulder. "Personally, I always preferred the Honeydukes passage. I always lifted a few sugar quills for you, remember?"

Remus hits his head on the low ceiling. "Best not let Kingsley hear you say that, Padfoot. Wouldn't want you on trial just after you get acquitted."

He tries to pretend that they are back in school, when there's a sheet of fear over everything but they are still being children, still in love and laughing and full of light. At the end of the tunnel there's a flash of red hair and he could swear it's Lily and not Ginny who helps him out of the tunnel, directs them where they need to be. Sirius holds him tight, old times, his breath hot against Remus' ear before the warmth is gone and they're out the door.

And then it starts.

* * *

The dust has yet to settle but people are cheering anyway. Remus hears a howl from someone in a mask and then wands begin to drop, a coward's surrender, he thinks. Because Sirius' words are still ringing true and he would die to save any one of his friends but these Masks are giving up people as quickly as they can and he has already lost so many he thinks maybe it would be easier if he were dead, too. And now there is one face he is still searching for, turning bodies over and wiping blood off corpses on his way to the Hall where he knows they are all gathered, waiting for the survivors, waiting for the dead.

Before he sees Harry, before he sees anyone that isn't a blur, he sees Sirius, slumped against a wall, unmoving and his face concealed by blood. For a moment he thinks he should end it right then and there because Harry or no Harry, what's the point? But then Sirius' chest rises, falls, and his bloodstained head tilts in Remus' direction. The red cracks when he smiles and then Remus is running, wand clattering on the stone floor before he reaches him, and then arms tight around Sirius. A sob tears out of a throat and he isn't sure if it's his or Sirius' but then they aren't holding each other anymore and Sirius' hands are on his face.

"Alright, Moony?" he asks and smooths a piece off hair off Remus' forehead though his hands are just as stained as his face.

"Better off than you, I suppose," Remus says. He helps Sirius to his feet though he supposes later he almost dragged him back to the Great Hall. Everyone is too weary and broken to notice another injured survivor but Harry turns and somehow Sirius can stand, a stagger, but still on two feet. Remus thinks Sirius might nearly be knocked off his feet when Harry hugs him but they are still all on two feet and then Harry is in his arms and Sirius, shaking and bloodied, is smiling again.

"I'll come find you in a bit, okay?" Harry says and Remus thinks of how he looks so much like James, hair longer than it has been in years, and he doesn't really want to let him go but he does.

"Think we could get someone to patch me up, Moony?" Sirius asks and Remus sees he is pale under all that blood but he's still smiling with the grin that could charm Madame Pince out of her knickers. Sirius leans on him, an arm around his shoulder for support as they seek out help. His body is radiating warmth through the tattered robes and Remus holds him up, holds him close. There's a line for a Healer, a Medi-Witch, anyone with more than a rudimentary knowledge of first aid and neither of them know is Padfoot is a priority case. Sirius stops and then Remus stops and Sirius faces him, eyes glint beneath the paint of blood. Then it is lips on lips and no one around them seems surprised or no one around them cares anymore. Remus tastes rust, salt, whiskey and hopes his unshaven face isn't a bother before he responds, holding each other up because Remus isn't quite sure he knows how to stand anymore.

Sirius breaks it off a minute later, the line moving, but stays leaning on Remus when he says, "I suppose we should move to Wales now."


End file.
